Tuesday, July 05, 2011

News items and comments

Miranda Devine – Monday, July 04, 11 (09:24 pm)

On Monday night, Tony Windsor sent out a press release responding to my Sunday column.

He is vicious about Katter, claiming his fellow independent is searching for headlines after having taken himself and his electorate “out of the political play”.

Then he claims the reason he didn’t support Katter’s motion two weeks ago which would have ensured the speedy resumption of the cattle trade was because he didn’t want to give Andrew Wilkie a “platform” to attack the live cattle trade.

Then he defends the MLA, a straw man which wasn’t even mentioned in the column.

The whole thing is illogical. But if you read the column and the press release together, it gives an interesting insight into Windsor’s behaviour, superficially plausible, wily and deeply conflicted.

Here it is:

4th July 2011There are those who do and those who want two BOB each way

The Member for New England Tony Windsor has responded to statements made by the Independent Member for Kennedy, Mr Bob Katter to the columnist Miranda Devine last weekend about Mr Windsor’s position on Mr Katter’s live cattle trade notice of motion in the Parliament.

‘Small achievement,’ you say, with more than a whiff of contempt for such a bourgeois effort.

I respond, ‘compared to what’? Small, no doubt, compared to the polio vaccine, the assembly line, and (one of my favorites, given that, like Mr. Ballas, I’m from Louisiana) air-conditioning. But large – huge – compared to the creativity of the political class.

Question: who has done more good for humanity? George Ballas and his weed-wacker, or [name any one of the many the politicians who 'creatively' figured out a new way to spend person A's money to help (or 'help') person B]?

The weed-wacker reduces the time we spend trimming our lawns and gardens. (“MyGod!” I hear the contemptuous mutter as they roll their eyes at such a trivial achievement. “How many stirring speeches has Mr. Ballas delivered?” [None, as far as I know.] “Was he a great general who led troops into glorious battle?” [No.] “Was he ever elected to public office?” [Not as far as I can tell.] “So he invents a machine to slice weeds and, in the process, makes a small fortune. He was no FDR or even Gerald Ford or John McCain. Get real.”)

RIP, Mr. Ballas – bourgeois hero. While no monuments will adorn the National Mall to celebrate your life, you did much more good than history will remember – and vastly more good than was done by any of the many butchers, frauds, and silver-tongued devils who do have their images recorded in marble or bronze in capital cities around the world.

Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 05, 11 (12:49 pm)

G&S Engineering Mackay chief executive officer Mick Crowe said shutting down the coal industry was only possible if every Australian was willing to accept a lower standard of living.

“If you said 100 years from now there won’t be a coal industry, that might be believable, but it’s disrespectful to Australians for a politician to stand up and say that’s an option inside 40 years to live to first world nation standards without coal or nuclear power,” Mr Crowe said.

“It’s especially disrespectful if the same politicians are travelling around in a motor car, living in a house with steel in it and air-conditioning.”

By the time you’ve counted up to personal fear 950, if you can list that many, your primary remaining fear will possibly be finding another 50 things to be worried about. You’ll be down to truly miniscule concerns, like the prominence of roles for Australian performers in local soaps or whatever’s going to happen with that WikiLeaks bloke.

Even if you make it all the way to 1000, however, it’s unlikely that any of your fears will include a certain English gentleman who enjoys chatting about the weather.

Tim Blair – Monday, July 04, 11 (01:36 pm)

I have a question about the carbon tax that nobody seems to be able to answer. How does the carbon tax reduce pollution?

Ian

And Fitzsy’s reply:

Dear Ian,

The answer is that if there are two companies that make widgets, one using dirty power and the other using clean power, the one with dirty power will have to pass on the tax to consumers, making their widgets more expensive. This means the clean power widget-makers get rich as they sell more of their widgets, encouraging everybody in the widget business to convert to clean power or get left behind. On that basic model, the air gets cleaner and more sustainable.

Tim Blair – Monday, July 04, 11 (12:55 pm)

Families, tradies, small business people do not have to worry about a petrol price increase.

Unless the price of petrol somehow rises due to other cost increases brought about by the tax. Just a theory. More from Gillard:

The design of this scheme is that carbon-pricing petrol will be out now and out for the future.

Out for the future, you say? The rogue Labor identity was quickly put in line by her Prime Minister:

Senator Brown, who had campaigned for petrol to be included in the tax, said: ‘’Forever is a very brave word in politics. Down the line I think there is an inevitability that all fossil fuels will, under the weight of evidence that they should, pay the full cost of the creation of climate change.’’

There was no climate change prior to the use of fossil fuels. Brown’s junior tyrant Christine Milne weighs in:

“We want Australians to drive less, and when they do drive, to drive more efficiently,” she said.

Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 05, 11 (11:38 am)

I’ve just had a marvellously clear view of the rooftops of central Geelong from the sixth floor of St John’s Hospital. I had my second cataract removed yesterday and have not had such bright sight in 20 years. Got a nice shiner though and a headache you could photograph.

Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 05, 11 (10:35 am)

HAVE you caught word of the hot new ABC comedy series? It’s edgy, transgressive even, and brave as can be, the most daring and provocative thing you will ever see.

Picture a kooky chick who goes to Mecca and really sticks it up those bearded old farts, gets in their faces, shows ‘em what a hip broad is all about. This babe has balls. She disrupts their holiest rite, tips the sacred items all over the ground and then, just to stick it up those Prophet lovers, she gets damp in the surf with a hot and horny mullah.

Whoops! Sorry, wires slightly crossed. Muslims actually have nothing to do with Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey – not the ridiculing of Muslims, anyway. That might have been just a tad too daring.

So while all other religions appear to be indulged, it is ...

Well, I suspect you can guess which faith is again the target of taxpayer-funded mockery, and which again is spared. But do read on for details.

Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 05, 11 (09:07 am)

But think of all those school halls we built and pink batts installed for $20 billion:

AUSTRALIA risks falling desperately behind in much-needed improvements to the nation’s transport, ports and water infrastructure and may not be able to fund up to $86 billion in projects without urgent reforms, a key Gillard government adviser has warned in a report that sounds alarm bells on productivity.

Infrastructure Australia has declared that in the three years since Kevin Rudd set up the body, governments have failed to grasp the nettle on reforms to infrastructure planning, funding and pricing, such as using tolls to fund new roads.

The advisory body’s chairman, Rod Eddington, said frustratingly slow progress on government reform was a drag on national productivity, which had slowed over the past decade to the point where it was below the average for countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 05, 11 (07:55 am)

Nico Botha of the Kimberleys’ Beefwood Park Station tells MTR 1377 this morning he’s shooting the first 200 of some 3000 cattle he may have to destroy, thanks to the Gillard Government’s bungling of the live cattle trade.

But having exempted petrol from the carbon tax, lifted the renewable energy fund to satisfy Greens’ demands and provided finance to keep power stations operating, the government’s pledge to keep the carbon tax “revenue-neutral” and not draw directly from taxpayers’ funds is under pressure.

The paper curiously blames both unknown natural factors and the big rise in China’s coal use, which is says means more emissions of sulfur to cool the planet. But shouldn’t that also mean more carbon dioxide, which we’re told would warm the wold dangerously?

The South Australian senator yesterday said OneSteel’s steelworks employed “several hundred people . . . and I imagine the flow-on effect for that small town would be significant”.

OneSteel is directly responsible for the jobs of up to 4000 people in the city of 22,000 people…

But yesterday, on the day the Australian Greens took the balance of power in the Senate, Senator Hanson-Young declared Whyalla would thrive without the steelworks that has sustained the industrial city since the 1960s…

“Whyalla and that whole area along that peninsula is one of the best places for wind energy in this country, and one of the best places in the world.”

Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 05, 11 (06:24 am)

Gerard Henderson says the Greens have just reminded Labor - and the Liberals - of what to do about these extremists at the next election:

A little hubris is a dangerous thing. And a large dose of arrogance can prove fatal. Yesterday in the Senate, the Greens leader, Bob Brown, nominated his Western Australian colleague, Scott Ludlam, for the position of president of the upper house. The motion was defeated, with the Labor, Coalition and minor party senators supporting the Labor incumbent, John Hogg…

It is much the same with the Coalition. Lately Brown has been bagging the Liberals and the Nationals while exhibiting a special vehemence for the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott. This overlooks one inconvenient fact: Bandt won his seat on Coalition preferences.

Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 05, 11 (06:05 am)

Spot the push-me-pull-you inconsistency here, in which a green solution is yet again undone by the unforeseen consequence:

COMPANIES that own almost 60 per cent of Sydney’s commercial office space have endorsed the lord mayor of Sydney Clover Moore’s plan to slash carbon emissions, signing an agreement paving the way to build new systems to cut power and water use.

PM: Well, the aim here, of course, is to prevent the continued growth of carbon pollution and its impact on climate change. You’re right – a lot of damage has been done already. We can’t go back into the past and fix that damage. What we can do is we can change our future, and I’m certainly saying to the Australian community we need to change our future and we can change our future through a scheme that protects Australian jobs, where households – 9 out of 10 – have got the benefit of tax cuts or payment increases, and we have the 1,000 biggest polluters in this country paying a price for carbon pollution so they innovate and change, and all of that adds up to a clean energy future.

TAYLOR: The question is, you’ve warned about what will happen if we don’t do anything, but how much of that warming is already in system? how much (inaudible) about even if we take all the actions that you’re talking about?

PM: Well, obviously, having gone to 387 parts per million in late 2010 – yes, you’re right that carbon dioxide’s already in the atmosphere, but I don’t believe that you can use that and say ‘well, we shouldn’t act in the future.’ Of course we should act. We can make a choice between a future with increased levels of dangerous climate change, or we can act to address that. I’m for action.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you said that you want the debate to be informed by facts, but twice there Lenore asked you what your advice was one the net effect of our action, taking into account action or lack of action in the rest of the world. Will you provide that fact?PM: We’re one of the 20 biggest polluters on the planet. Per head of population, we are the biggest generator of carbon pollution per head of population in the developed world. That means we have to act.

Is the rest of the world acting? Well, we’ve been through those facts and figures before, and I’m happy to supply them all again, but, yes, the rest of the world is also acting on climate change and we can’t afford to be left behind.

I consider Gillard’s answers to be so evasive as to be dishonest. You are being deliberately deceived. The sacrifice Gillard is demanding of you - of your money and perhaps your job - will achieve nothing at all to stop the predicted warming. And it will not slow that warming either, which is my point, and the answer to my own question

To remind you of one Gillard minister, Mark Dreyfus, who let slip the truth to blog reader Mark, who’d asked:

Can you provide details on how much the global temperature will drop with the introduction of the this tax in 2020 (~5years)/ 2025 (~10years) /2065 (~50 years)?

Imploring that the debate be based on facts, Gillard said the scientific advice “indicates that if we do not cut carbon pollution average temperatures around Australia could increase by between 2.2 to over five degrees Celsius by 2070”.

But when asked what the temperature would be if we did everything she was urging, she was unable to provide a figure and she was even less forthcoming about the carbon tax to be unveiled this weekend.

The idea is “false and stupid… a scientific aberration”, the International Society of Camelid Research and Development (ISOCARD) charged yesterday, saying camels were being made culprits for a man-made problem.

“We believe that the good-hearted people and innovating nation of Australia can come up with better and smarter solutions than eradicating camels in inhumane ways,” it said.

The kill-a-camel suggestion is floated in a paper distributed by Australia’s Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, as part of consultations for reducing the country’s carbon footprint.

Only in Australia could the warming movement be so out of control that a government department treats such an idea seriously.

On the other hand, when the ACTU is captured by Greens ideology, the workers are in danger…

But while I’d love to say that independent school teachers are rebelling against the Greens agenda being stuffed down the throats of students, the truth is that self-interest is more the motive here:

The decision by the Independent Education Union of Australia represents one of the few national disaffiliations from the ACTU in its 84-year history and the first since the Transport Workers Union split in 1995. In a scathing letter to ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence, IEUA federal secretary Chris Watt accused the ACTU of discriminating against “our tens of thousands of members in Catholic and independent schools” by favouring state-run schools…

Mr Watt told The Australian that the union was furious at Mr Lawrence’s decision to change the wording of the ACTU’s Working Australia Census, which surveyed union members nationally on an array of issues, including education. The survey asked workers to what extent they agreed that unions should be campaigning on “the quality of education, including adequate funding for public schools?”

Mr Watt said a teleconference of union officials had agreed the survey question should ask only about the “quality of education”, and the reference to “adequate funding for public schools” was added by Mr Lawrence.

“From the perspective of the IEUA, the current positioning of the ACTU in relation to education and school funding is not only inconsistent with ACTU policy, but has in fact moved to a position in line with that taken by the Greens,” Mr Watt wrote.

Andrew Bolt – Monday, July 04, 11 (03:24 pm)

Its primary vote is just 32 per cent. And 45 per cent of those polled said they were worried about them and theirs keeping their jobs.

The uncertainty, incompetence and ad hockery in Canberra is punishing this country. An anxious shopkeeper this morning told me, “What business is safe if this government can kill the cattle exports overnight?”

Andrew Bolt – Monday, July 04, 11 (02:46 pm)

Would the professor push her to have the operation that would most probably cure her?

Or would he keep pushing the mad faith in alternative medicine that has since made him, as he modestly advertises, a “renowned author, juggler, media personality and Murdoch University academic”?

Ah. Tough choice.

You see, Dingle, an “environmental toxicologist” at this Perth university’s school of Health and Environment, has spent the past 20 years getting rich and kinda famous by demonising the very kind of medicine that could spare a woman like Pen from what a surgeon told a Perth coroner this week was “one of the most painful diseases you could possibly get”.

Tonight at 8pm on ABC television,Australian Story will have the first of a two-part report on this case. The script suggests some gripping viewing:

Toni Brown, sisterPeter actually became the gatekeeper in that situation in that it was Peter who seemed to be the one who was more in control of who was welcome and who wasn’t welcome. Which meant that you went in, did a bit of house cleaning and you didn’t ask any difficult questions.Natalie Brown, sisterAs I was leaving one day she said, “Oh do you think I’m getting better?” And I said, “No I don’t”. And we were standing in the hallway. I said, “No I don’t think you’re getting better. And she said, ‘Oh, you mustn’t say that you won’t be allowed to come back’.Annie Malcolm, sisterHe was completely convinced in his program, methodology - the exercise, the positive thinking, the life- the diet. And the supplements, that’s what was going to really work, yep…

Peter:I just broke down and I yelled. I was stupid. How could I do this. How could I go along with this craziness.

After Julia Gillard yesterday confirmed that motorists would be spared the impact of the carbon tax on bowser prices, “now and in the future”, the Greens revealed the deal included an inquiry, which would recommend changes that could be made with the support of parliament from 2015.

Steve Price: We were a little confused about the use of the world petrol. Did the PM mean “fuel”?

Dreyfus: The PM meant petrol, very clearly....

Price: So it’s petrol not fuel.

Dreyfus: It’s petrol that we’re talking about…

Price: So her promise doesn’t apply to diesel or LPG?

Dreyfus: No, we’ve made it clear at the moment that we’re talking about petrol…

Price: We contacted the PM’s office this morning because we were confused about the word petrol as opposed to fuel, and according to the Prime Minister’s office she meant to say fuel, not petrol.

Dreyfus: Well, that’s good. If that’s clear.

Price: Well, you don’t know. You’re the minister here. Is it petrol or is it fuel?

Dreyfus: Well, we were about to announce, ah, we hope within a short time the full details of this package… What was made clear by the Prime Minister yesterday was petrol. And if we’ve gone to fuel, that’s clear, too… And if you’ve had confirmation this morning from the Prime Minister’s office that it’s fuel , then it’s fuel.

Andrew Bolt – Monday, July 04, 11 (12:16 pm)

Mr Abbott previously has stated the coalition’s opposition to a carbon tax would not change even if a plebiscite found in favour of the government’s proposed scheme.

But on Monday he told the House of Representatives, in presenting his private member’s bill that aims to set up the national poll, he would accept the final vote…

“I want to make it absolutely crystal clear, should I succeed and should this matter of the carbon tax be put to the people that will determine this matter.

“It may not change the arguments but it will certainly settle the politics… It’s absolutely inconceivable that the opposition, faced with a vote in favour of a carbon tax, will continue to oppose it,” Mr Abbott said.

Some wriggle room there. But I do not like having a party’s position of high principle and national interest settled by a national vote. Yes, a vote can establish the majority will, which should then prevail. But it must not commit a party to accepting a position contrary to its judgment of where the country’s deepest interests lie. Whether 20 per cent or 80 per cent of Australians want a carbon dioxide tax, the fact remains that it will do nothing to stop a global warming that may have stopped anyway and may not hurt us even if it resumed.

It is madness, and no political party should be bound by a plebiscite from warning the nation against unreason and economic suicide.

Andrew Bolt – Monday, July 04, 11 (12:04 pm)

I never dreamed I’d live in a country in which Jewish businesses were boycotted and blockaded.

The shame. The utter shame.

But then I’d never dreamed, either, that I’d be taken to court for expressing my opinion. Or that a news organisation would be denied a government contact for being politically unsympathetic. Or that news outlets would be banned by government ministers for asking basic questions. Or that academics could protest against free speech.

UPDATE

And that a letter such as this could appear in the Sydney Morning Herald:

The wise and timely essay by Samantha Selinger-Morris (’’Old hatreds in a new medium’’, July 2-3) raises an issue that should make Jewish community leaders in Australia rethink their attitudes to the growth of anti-Semitism.

Tragically this upsurge of racism is attributable directly to the perceived suffering the Israeli government has imposed on the Palestinian people.The current Israeli government is more responsible for the spread of anti-Semitism worldwide than any ratbag racist groups waving symbols of Germany in the 1930s…

My pinky is good for picking small locks

Who is selling immunity?

AS RECENTLY as 500 years ago tsunamis more powerful than any in recent centuries swept the South Pacific and experts believe even bigger waves will come and almost certainly hit Australia's east coast...

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Time Team does it in three days

THE Sydney Opera House is a monument to highbrow culture but a massive trench in its forecourt and tunnelling beneath the iconic building could endanger "highly significant" remains of early colonial ...

Clinton would try to cheat

A mini-deal to extend the debt ceiling for the short term could be the only answer for Republican lawmakers and President Obama to reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling before the Aug. 2 deadline to avoid a government default on its loans.

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The UN seem to be closely connected with the violence, but not a solution.

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About Me

I'm author of History in a Year by the Conservative Voice aka History of the World in a Year by the Conservative Voice.

I'm the Conservative Voice.

I'm looking to make contact with those who might use my skill.

I have an m-audio mobile pre amp fed by the audiotechnica 2041sp condensor mic pack. Prior to 15/4/06, I'd used a Shure sm-58 that required a nuclear blast to register a sound or the internal mic of my aged imac, which has a penchance to recording my breathing. I also used a Griffin itrip, until the community convinced me it was not hiding my talent as well as the other mics.

I am a Writer and an occasional Math Teacher (Sir, what's the occasion?). I like to sing, having no instrumental talent (cannot even clap in time, and yes, I'm aware singing badly IS obnoxious).

I have performed the finale to Les Miserables before an audience of 500. I have also sung before a similar audience (students, parents) renditions of 'I Will' (Beatles), 'Mr Cairo' (Jon Vangelis) and 'I am Australian' (Seekers). Now I seek another profession because the audience hates me ..